The Crack-Up I
2009
Acrylic on carpet mounted on board
Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Praz-Delavallade, Paris

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Exhibitions

Mai-Thu Perret: An Ideal for Living

December 18, 2010 through March 13, 2011

Contemporary Swiss artist Mai-Thu Perret’s multidisciplinary practice fuses feminist politics with classic modernist abstraction and utopian dreams. Her installations synthesize a range of media and genres--including literature, design, craft, and performance—-conjuring an imaginary alternate history of twentieth-century art, design, and social activism. Much of Perret’s work over the past decade has stemmed from "The Crystal Frontier", the fictional archive of a female utopian commune called New Ponderosa. From paintings and sculptures to ceramics and textiles or film, Perret’s works infuse the formal vocabulary of modernism with a distinctly handmade aesthetic. Perret’s exhibition at UMMA will present an episodic overview of her work from the past decade and will include numerous works never before exhibited in North America.

This exhibition is made possible in part by the University of Michigan Health System, Office of the Provost, CEW Frances and Sydney Lewis Visiting Leaders Fund, and Institute for Research on Women and Gender, as well as the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, Macy's, and the Consulate General of Switzerland in Chicago, and the Katherine Tuck Enrichment Fund.